Re-Thinking How We Study and Clinically Target Attentional Dysregulation
Central theories of psychopathology have implicated biased attentional processing of emotional information in the etiology and maintenance of multiple prevalent psychiatric disorders. Accordingly, researchers have studied bias and its role in human maladaptation for decades in the hopes of translating this knowledge to an intervention methodology that will short-circuit the development psychopathology by modifying bias. Yet, despite more than 2000 scientific papers to-date (and more MA and PhD theses than anyone cares to admit!), the theorized promise of bias and its clinical intervention has not been realized empirically.
We argue attentional bias research has been hindered by reliance on a decades-old experimental paradigm conceptualizing and quantifying bias as a static trait. We propose that a dynamic process perspective on attentional processing of emotional information may bring the field’s conceptualization and quantification closer to the nature of the phenomenon. In the talk, I will highlight the conceptual and empirical rationale for this emerging dynamic process perspective. I will then present a series of studies and findings that may (a) help to elucidate the behavioral expressions of AB, (b) rectify poor psychometrics of cognitive-experimental indices of bias, (c) disambiguate mixed findings regarding the role(s) of bias in psychopathology, and (d) inform the development of novel cognitive bias modification intervention approaches. To conclude, I will highlight the potential implications of these findings for ongoing basic and clinical research.